Something Stronger
by Circle123
Summary: She's definitely in love with Marius. So it doesn't make sense that when they're giving speeches in the square and Marius is right there and she can indulge in looking at him without being obvious about her feelings, well, it doesn't make sense that her eyes catch on Enjolras and won't leave.


**So Eponine and Enjolras have ruined my life. Seriously. Also, the title is taken from "Made of Stone" from Papermill's Hunchback of Notre Dame. I thought it fit the Marble Man.**

She's in love with Marius.

Marius, with his melty-chocolate eyes and shy smiles. Marius, with his idiotic, romantic, absurdly idealistic bent. From the moment she saw him, he was different. He was kind and he was soft and there were no rough edges to his words, and he had spoken to her like a person, and she couldn't remember the last time that had happened. Marius, with his sweetness and his utter unavailability. She's definitely in love with Marius.

So it doesn't make sense that when they're giving speeches in the square and Marius is right there and she can indulge in looking at him without being obvious about her feelings, well, it doesn't make sense that her eyes catch on Enjolras and won't leave.

Enjolras is ice and fire, Apollo personified, as they say, the marble man. She doesn't know much of books or learning, but she knows of Enjolras. His hair burns in the sun, his eyes are icy-blue and hotter than fireworks in their passion. His words cut like knives, and she doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time, but he's easy to watch. Part of her wants to follow him off the edge of the earth.

She sees the way the rest of them look at him. Marius, with admiration. Grantaire, with adoration. Jehan, Combeferre, Gavroche and the others—Enjolras is everything. He is purpose and drive, he is the goal and the ambition.

Eponine understands why they will die for him.

She stumbles in on him alone one rare evening. He's nursing a cup of cheap beer, brooding into the fire. Firelight plays on his cheekbones and aquiline nose, darkening his pupils. This lighting makes him look different—wrong, to her eyes. For the first time she sees creases on his temples, a day's worth of stubble on his chin, and as he takes a drink she thinks absently that this is definitive proof of his physical humanity, proof that he isn't carved from marble. When she looks at him she sees a man, hardly more than a boy, hardened and wearied with the weight of the world.

That is not who he is.

When she takes a step closer, she thinks he'll turn back into himself, back into the inaccessible demigod with flames in his eyes and Patria in his heart. His temporary humanity is nothing more than a trick of the lighting.

The floor creaks.

He looks up, staring at her blankly, ice-blue eyes strangely soft and quiet. She knows what's wrong now. There's no passion in his stance, no fire to animate him and thrill his followers.

Maybe he is just a man, she thinks.

"Sorry, sir," she says. "I didn't mean to—interrupt."

"You did not," he tells her. "Who are you?"

She's been to every meeting, seen every speech, from the day he started them. She fades into the background, and he lives in the spotlight. Sunlight and shadow. "Oh, I'm not— I'll—um, go—"

He hums, still staring at her with those eyes she doesn't recognize. "Can I offer you a drink?"

She's going to say no, because this will probably lead to a conversation and frankly she has nothing to talk to him about. She's not educated, not funny or pretty or remotely interesting, and she'd rather be forgotten than a disappointment.

"Is my company so poor?" He asks, something like a smirk playing on his lips, and the line is so manipulative and pathetic that she can't believe she's falling for it.

She sits down. He pours her a mug.

The beer is bitter going down her throat, and she coughs, but it's warm too, making her insides feel more comfortable than than her outsides at the moment.

"What brings you to this fair side of the city?"

She notices the grime on his cheeks and hands, collected under his fingernails. "You have a strange idea of fair, sir."

He breathes a laugh and glances outside the window, at the rain that's still falling. For once, there are no calculations whirring behind his eyes. "The people are fair."

"We have our moments." She winks. It's an obvious joke—the state of her shoes and the mud still dripping off the bottom of her dress almost push it into a bald-faced lie—but she's rewarded with a smile.

"You haven't answered my questions."

She'd hoped he hadn't noticed that. "Sir, please. You'll lose interest if I tell all my secrets."

He quirks an eyebrow. "You're near twenty-one. You've grown used to the streets. You care too much about others."

"Only some others," she grants him. He's right about everything but her age—she's fairly sure she's seventeen. He's not the only one aged by life.

Then his brow wrinkles, and she knows he's figured it out. "You're Marius's friend."

"Oh, now where's the joy in that?"

"So you and he—" He stops, and she can't read the look in his eye.

"No! No, that's not what I—"

"I-I didn't mean—"

They both trail off, and she sighs. "I'm not subtle, am I?"

He laughs, briefly, and it's so genuine it feels like the sun has left the sky and joined their little party. "No, no you're not."

She laughs too, with none of the grace he displays.

"What do you see in him?" He questions lightly.

 _Kindness and chocolate eyes and safety,_ she wants to say, but the man across from her is waiting—his eyes are soft, their electricity just a gentle hum behind his pupils—and—"I don't know. What do you?"

He looks away and leans back, smiling, completely at ease. After a pause: "Faith."

She takes a long swig from her mug, feeling the heat settle into her core. As far as reasons go, it's not a bad one to keep Marius around.

"Shouldn't you be preoccupied with something or other?"

"Shouldn't you?"

"I'm not you, sir."

"Nor am I. No one is."

"Such angst," she accuses lightly.

"I have no doubt of its absence on the morrow."

"Nor I." She smirks. There's another break of silence. Then, "Idealism. He sees a better world. And maybe, if I stay long enough, I will see it too." It's sentimental, but it's true.

"He's a fool."

She knows. "He's only following you."

"I am not idealistic."

"What do you call those speeches?"

"Oh, no. _Those_ are idealistic. _I_ am not."

She lets out a bark of laughter and shakes her head, refilling her mug.

"I am not! I'm the soul of realism." His voice darkens. "I know that—"

"What do you mean?" She hasn't thought about it—they will fail, of course they will, but if he knows it, if their leader knows it, then why—

He stands up. Looks at her, eyes trailing over her dress and the skin stretched too thin on her bones, the scars burned white on her arms and the way she flinches at the sound of a door slam. For some inexplicable reason she wants to hide. "How can I not?" He asks the fire. "Winning was not the point."

"You can stop this." If he doesn't, his fire will be quenched, his passion victimized by Paris's corruption, and the thought knots her stomach in ways she didn't expect.

"Dying's not so bad," he says at last.

She pulls away. "What about those boys?"

"They know the risks."

"What good will it do? What _good_ will it do?"

Something plays on his lips—nothing so bright as a smile, but maybe related to it, in some reality darker and bitterer than theirs. "Do you do nothing but argue?"

"Haven't enough of us died?"

He threads long fingers through his hair, pacing away from her. "I've tried everything."

"Now that," she says, forcing him to meet her gaze, "is not the Apollo I know."

"Apollo?"

"They call you such. It fits."

"Ridiculous."

"As are you. You'll find an answer."

"I hardly think you know—"

"I grew up on the streets, remember?" Her mouth sets in a hard line. "I'm still alive. There is always an answer, always a compromise."

"Compromise is—"

"What allows you to fight another day!"

"I-"

"You are a fool!" She spits, and he doesn't move at her venom, doesn't even flinch. He wouldn't be the marble man if he did. A long pause. She breathes. Then, "You have money—you can walk away." _Paris doesn't have to ruin you too,_ she doesn't say, but the thought hangs heavy in the air between them.

"But what about—" He gestures to the window outside, to the France that lies beyond. "How can I leave them? You know who my father is. Perhaps my death, our deaths, will be worth something, as the thousands of poor have not." There's pleading in his blue eyes, and she adds that to the list of firsts he's inspired since she walked in the door. His words sink into the silence, swallowed up by the fire's flames.

She takes a breath and stands, walks to him. Her fingers trail over his cheek, and they inhale at the same time. "Sir," she says. "You could have done more than this."

Eyes wide and dark, breath catching. "As could you."

"And you call Marius the fool."

"What else do you call a man who can't see what's in front of his face?" He whispers, and she sways a little on her feet.

"Blind," she says.

The air crackles around them, sparking like the lightening in his eyes.

"No one has ever accused me of that," he tells her, and then he's dipping his head, catching her lips with his. His mouth is chapped, eyes closed, and there's an innocence and inexperience to the kiss that she hadn't expected from the Apollo. Of course, he's hardly Apollo now—not this boy, vulnerable, hesitant. She finds herself thinking that if this is the boy beyond the barricade, beyond the demigod usually seen—then maybe she's had it wrong this whole time.

And she's been kissed before, more expertly, and she's in love with Marius anyway, so there really isn't any good reason for her hands to shake or her stomach to dip, but they do.

So she steps closer, hand still on his cheek. In turn, he wraps an arm around her waist, one hand tangling in her hair, and suddenly she feels the fire in him, that passion that turns the man into a demigod. There is art in his lips, art and intensity, and she takes back everything she ever thought about his being made of marble. Marble doesn't breathe like this, ragged and gasping. Marble doesn't have blood that burns, or pupils that dilate, or lips like ambrosia.

Marble could never kiss like this.

"I've never seen you do this, in all this time," she mumbles into his mouth. "Grantaire, yes. Courfeyrac, Combeferre. Even Jehan, all of them—but not you."

"The things I give up for France," he sighs facetiously, and she smiles despite the morbidity of his humor.

"Then why—"

"Well, she's getting all of me tomorrow."

She steps back from the magic his mouth weaves into her thoughts, and he looks lost for a moment-like he's forgotten how to breathe without her in his arms. "Don't jest."

"I… I didn't mean to," he sighs. "I didn't mean any of this. You just… happened." She spies a question in his eyes, almost like he doesn't understand it himself. Well, he isn't alone. She couldn't explain him—or what they just did—if she tried.

"If you left, we could—" She swallows, glances up. That's not what she meant to say.

"I can't."

"I know. You're a fool, but I know."

He steps closer. "Do you—I mean, I'm not Marius—"

"I don't want you to be."

"Are you sure? I don't want you kissing me and thinking of—"

Like she could have thought of _anything_ when he was kissing her.

"I just—"

"Is that insecurity I hear?"

"I—yes."

"Why? Why do you care what—"

"I care, okay?" He turns to face the fire.

"Okay!"

"Okay."

He breathes deeply, then: "I have one night."

"I know."

"I just—I don't want to be alone."

"You wouldn't have to be if—."

"I know. I know. But—can you just—" There's fear in his eyes. She has never seen him more human. "Can you just stay?"

She walks to him and curls into his chest. They sit facing the fire, his heart thudding beneath her ear. "It didn't have to end like this."

His lips skate her forehead, the part of her hair. "I know." Then, "Thank you."

"You're a fool," she tells him, fondly.

"I know."

They stay there, her breathing slowly evening out into sleep. His eyes remain open most of the night, and when he wakes the next morning he won't remember falling asleep. At first, he will see the shine of her hair beneath his lips and think he's still dreaming. But the sounds of Paris outside quickly strip the fog from his brain, and so he will carry her up to his room and tuck his coat in around her. There might be a moment when he waits at the door, all sadness and softness and regret, but she won't wake up—won't see him turn back into marble as he faces the day ahead.


End file.
